1. Field of the Invention
This invention relates to retaining slings used to supportably hold the shaker pads on nut and fruit shakertype harvesting equipment. The present invention is particularly directed towards a method of cooling the sling itself as these become extremely hot from friction caused by clamping the shaker pad to a tree to be harvested and vibrating the tree. My invention provides for circulating a liquid coolant directly through the sling material structure thus eliminating the need for greasing the sling surface and reducing the expense and time required to grease the sling.
2. Description of the Prior Art
Although the basic design of fruit tree shaker pad retaining slings are necessarily somewhat similar, I have seen no harvesting equipment available on the open market or even advertised in any type of publication that provides any sort of liquid cooling means for fruit tree shaker pad retaining slings. With the type of equipment presently in use, harvesting must be intermittently stopped and the slings lubricated with expensive heat resistant grease to reduce friction.